What is your work style?

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Office culture has undergone some major changes in the past two decades. Gone are cubicles, rigid 9-to-5 schedules and “climbing the ladder” of corporate structures. Open office layouts, flex hours, working from home and diplomatic corporate structures are the new normal in the white collar workplace. But there is one part of office culture that hasn’t changed: the need to build cohesive teams made up of various working styles.

Superstars come in all different forms. They can be solitary creative geniuses, strong team leaders or adaptable and flexible. When you’re building a team, first determine your own business identity and then familiarize yourself with the different work styles.

What is your work style?

Your working style is the way that you go about your day-to-day tasks on the job. Everyone has their own working style – or strategy – for optimally performing while at work. It’s important to know your work style so that you can maximize your time at work, communicate effectively with others and be as productive as you can be. So how can you determine which working style you use?

First, ask yourself: how would you describe your work style? Are you more efficient when you’re working independently and are responsible for your own schedule and tasks? Or do you like having a team to give feedback on your ideas, provide support and help you stay on track? Do you routinely bring emotion into the workplace or do you focus on the facts? When it comes to problem-solving, do you pay close attention to details or are you more of a big picture type? The answers to these questions will give you hints as to whether you’re more independent or cooperative, strategic or detail-oriented.

To determine your working style, you can also think about how you communicate (written versus verbal, listening versus talking), how you deal with conflict (confrontative versus avoidant) and how you go through your day (very planned out versus “winging it”). You can even take a personality test like the DISC Assessment to help you figure out your working style.

Different work styles

There is no right or wrong working style – every workplace needs a lot of different types of workers in order to function efficiently. Just imagine if everyone was an independent, creative and visionary type: Nothing would ever get done. On the other hand, a workplace filled with detail-oriented planners would quickly get bogged down in minutiae. The key is to know your own style, so you can be more aware of how you’re communicating with others. Then you can hire the right team whose working styles complement each other so that productivity soars.

1. Independent

Some people are not happy unless they’re working solo – we’ll classify this as an independent working style. They have great difficulty working closely with other people and can’t work well under a great deal of supervision. They have to run their own show. They like to follow their instinct and see where it takes them.

Visionary and entrepreneurial types often have an independent working style. This type is also often found in creative or scientific fields. Imagine the writer working late on a novel or the engineer’s intense focus on solving a problem. Independent working styles are efficient, disciplined and productive.

2. Cooperative

Others function best as part of a group. We call their professional working style cooperative. They want to share responsibility for any task they take on. They enjoy bouncing feedback off others and working together on projects.

Cooperative workers are diplomatic and are typically excellent communicators. They are often found in relationship-oriented roles like human resources and in leadership roles. Account executives, HR directors and project managers are often known to have cooperative working styles. They’re organized, collaborative and usually know the secret to strategic learning.

3. Proximity

Still others have a proximity working style, which is somewhere in between. They prefer to work with other people while maintaining sole responsibility for a task. They are in charge but not alone. They get to have a social connection with their coworkers while pursuing their own projects.

Proximity working styles are found in all aspects of business. They are versatile and adaptable and able to take on many different roles. They’ll connect the independent and cooperative types, helping to build a team that works.

4. Supportive

Do you have employees who are expressive and emotionally aware? Individuals whose main goal is to form deep connections with their colleagues and your clients have a supportive working style. Team members with this style are adept at facilitating team interactions and will be able to tell you if something is amiss with one of their coworkers. They thrive on collaboration rather than competition and are happiest celebrating successes with other members of the team.

5. Big picture

For every detail-lover on your team, there must be a leader who thrives in their big picture working style. If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s likely you have this type of style. Big picture types see and embrace the company’s vision. They drive change and are able to integrate competing ideas and priorities into one innovative strategy. Having some big picture types on your team will help you anticipate future obstacles and turn them into opportunities.

How to maximize different work styles

Everyone wants to build a culture of positive change, high productivity and cooperative teamwork for their business. In order to do this, you must determine how to get the most out of the people you supervise. There are many factors ­– including working style – that influence employees and affect everything from how they work with others to their ability to stick to deadlines.

Have you ever heard of the Peter Principle? It’s the idea that all people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. One reason this happens is that employers are often insensitive to their employees’ working styles. If you’re asking someone to do something that goes against their working style, they most likely won’t excel at it. Recruiting and promoting successfully begins with the manager finding, recognizing and rewarding the different styles appropriately.

How to reward the independent type

Sometimes you’ll find an employee who is brilliant but always seems to be going against the grain. They always have to do things their way. This person just might not be cut out to be an employee – maybe they have an independent working style and are more suited to becoming an entrepreneur. They are the kind of person who has to run the business, and sooner or later probably will if you do not provide an avenue of expression. Big picture working style employees also tend to fall into this category.

If you have a valuable employee like this who tends toward the independent or big picture working styles, find a way to maximize talents and provide as much autonomy as possible. If you put them on a group project, they’ll be unhappy at work and drive everyone crazy. But if you give the employee with this working style as much independence as possible, they can prove to be invaluable. That’s what the new concepts of entrepreneurship are all about.

How to get the most from cooperative working styles

People who work best in a cooperative setting and have supportive styles thrive on a large amount of feedback and human interaction. Would you reward their good work by putting them in charge of some new autonomous venture? Not if you want to make use of the best talents of this working style. That doesn’t mean you have to keep a person at the same level, but it does mean thinking about promotions and new work experiences that utilize the person’s talents. Just as everyone has their own leadership style, an employee’s true working style must be recognized and worked with accordingly.

Likewise, many people with proximity working styles want to be part of a team but need to do their own work alone. In any structure, there are jobs that nurture all the professional working style variations. The key is to answer the question “What is your work style?” and then have the acuity to know how your employees work when assigning tasks you want them to thrive in.

Working style and communication

Individuals with different working styles naturally communicate differently, which often leads to a disconnect in the workplace. A supportive style employee is adept at using the power of deep listening while big picture types tend to talk over others in their excitement to discuss high-level concepts. If you find that communication is suffering within your team, consider having your employees take the DISC assessment mentioned above that will help them identify how they communicate and how their style can conflict with others.

How can you honor these individual communication and working styles? Here’s an exercise to do today. After reading this article, practice eliciting your team’s metaprograms. Metaprograms are a person’s inner workings that affect the ways they process their experiences – and affect their working style. Ask the right questions, such as:

  • What do you want in a relationship (or house or car or career)?
  • How do you know when you have been successful at something?
  • What is the relationship between what you are doing this month and what you did last month?
  • How often does someone have to demonstrate something to you before you are convinced it’s true?
  • Tell me about a favorite work experience and why it was important to you.

Does the person pay attention to you while you are asking these questions? Are they interested in your response or are they occupied elsewhere? Do they respond with lots of answers about themselves, or do they discuss how they appreciate a teamwork environment?

These are only a few of the questions you can ask to successfully elicit the metaprograms we’ve discussed and more accurately pinpoint your team members’ working styles. If you don’t get the information you need, rephrase the question until you do. This will help you to determine working styles and figure out if this new candidate will be right for your business.

Working style in the interview process

High-performance teams are essential to business success – and properly combining the different working styles is key to creating effective teams. It isn’t surprising then that “What is your work style?” is a common interview question. The interviewer wants to figure out not only whether you fit in on the team, but whether you will fit in with overall company culture.

If the current team is made up of many independent workers, the interviewer may be looking for a more collaborative or supportive addition to round out the team’s strengths. If there are one or two big picture thinkers, the team may need more proximity workers who can step in and get things done.

So how do you answer this question? First, do your research. Get as familiar as you can with the company’s culture and talk to existing or former employees if you can. Read the job listing in detail and look for hints about the working style that will be required.

During the interview, mirror these keywords you saw in the job listing when you are describing your working style. Here are a few common words that often come up and how you can describe your working style to fit them:

Conceptual

Key words like “conceptual” and “brainstorm” usually indicate big picture roles. Describe yourself as creative and visionary, yet also a team player.

Multitasker/self-starter

Proximity and independent working styles are often a good fit for roles that call on you to wear many hats. Describe yourself as detail-oriented, organized and flexible yet focused.

Reliable

Roles that mention reliability and trustworthiness are often looking for team players. Words like team-oriented, consistent and honest will fit well here.

Fast-paced environment

This can indicate a competitive environment that may not be best for those with supportive working styles. If you think it’s a match, you can describe yourself as confident, determined and focused to help you land the job.

Be honest and always give examples. Let the interviewer know your preferred working style while also showing your ability to be flexible and take on different roles. Focus on the qualities that best fit with your prior research, but be honest about your requirements. You want a job that’s the right fit for you so that you can find success and fulfillment in your career.

Those with different working styles all have a part to play in the grand scheme of a successful business. If you can learn to harness the power of the different types of working styles, you’ll be one step ahead of your competition when it comes to improving efficiency and creating a successful team.

a purple paper boat is leading a row of white paper boats .
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